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Comment by ggambetta | Hacker News Reader

Suddenly it feels so stupid that we're spending so much money (or any money at all) in breaking things and killing each other instead of making things. What a waste.

We're all close neighbors in this isolated planet, bickering amongst ourselves. Maybe we need a proper alien invasion to bring us all together? Although we're facing global threats right now (climate change, pandemics...) and we can't get our sh...tuff together, so I don't have much hope in that scenario either. Makes me think of Don't Look Up.

Welp, I've made myself sad now.

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If there were an alien invasion tomorrow, conspiracy theorists would immediately begin claiming that aliens don’t exist and anyone who believes in them has been brainwashed by George Soros and CNN. Nothing will change.

Well, that's depressing and probably accurate.

A recognisable alien invasion happening in our lifetimes is... astronomically improbable.

I think it would be reasonable to be initially skeptical.

Certainly if I just saw it on TV, it seems most probable that the news has got it wrong somehow.

A recognizable alien invasion is astronomically improbably by itself, no need to constrain into a lifetime. If we got invaded, we would all die never knowing it's happening.

Don't Look up was a reasonably funny sendup in a similar vein.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up

As a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself, I would have to disagree. I'm honestly thankful when a presumed conspiracy is verified and adopts mass support. The Snowden leaks are a great example. People forget that pre-2013, USA mass surveillance was a conspiracy theory. James Clapper lied under oath to downplay the scope of the surveillance, and anyone who suggested this was a conspiracy theorist. I was considered a conspiracy theorist among certain friend groups. WMD in Iraq is another example that was very frustrating.

Powerful people have conspired to commit crimes all throughout history. It seems we need a new word to describe this, because I guess conspiracy means something different to most people.

Same is true if God existed :)

Bring us all together around what? Everyone always leaves that part out.

The only reasonable answer would be freedom, so that diverse people can be happy together. Anything else is merely a call for everyone else to do things the way you want.

But there's no consensus around freedom. When it comes down to it, a lot of people don't want it.

That's why freedom is not enough. There's a reason why France chose to combine liberty with equality and fraternity.

But what does fraternity mean for diverse people? What is the unifying principle?

It's easy to call someone your brother if they are similar to you. Not so easy when they are truly different.

> What is the unifying principle?

I know it sounds self-referential, but the unifying principle(s) could be liberty, equality, and fraternity.

In other words, you exhibit fraternity by supporting your fellow citizens as they work with you towards expanding and defending those shared values.

What that means in practice depends on your skills and interests, but it could for example mean serving alongside citizens of different ethnicities in a non-segregated army (or military alliance), or hiring employees of a different religion in a non-discriminating business.

Unifying around freedom makes sense to me. Unifying around fraternity sounds entirely circular.

Military service doesn't sound like a way to unify the world -- who is the enemy?

Unifying around a business is about producing/creating. That is a major common ground in the world and has (in my opinion) created a lot of peace. It doesn't feel like a complete answer, though -- for instance China still feels very distant despite our economic ties.

> Unifying around freedom makes sense to me. Unifying around fraternity sounds entirely circular.

If fraternity were the only goal then I would agree with you. "Working together to achieve the goal of working together" doesn't make sense. But it does make sense for a society to identify fraternity as a core value, since it is a principle which is applied when trying to achieve other societal goals.

> Military service doesn't sound like a way to unify the world -- who is the enemy?

The enemy could be anyone who is working against that unity. Alternatively, if the consensus towards unity is so strong that no one ever tries to use violence against it, then the military could be devoted to humanitarian causes like disaster relief.

Some would say nobody is "truly different" in any way that really matters. We all want food, clothing, shelter, and beyond that, differences don't matter much.

> But what does fraternity mean for diverse people? What is the unifying principle?

Same needs.

That's what I thought right up until Russia invaded Ukraine. I couldn't believe it happened for 3 days.

Nah, as long as there's humans around, you better be armed and trained. Vicious animals, you never know when they'll decide to rape then kill you.

I agree that in this decade the invasion was unexpected. I couldn't believe it either until I read up on the history of the region.

In the 2000s, many nations (including Ukraine!) supported the second Iraq war that was motivated by the known false accusation of WMD presence in Iraq:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing

> In the 2000s, many nations (including Ukraine!) supported the second Iraq war

The leaders supported it, but I'm not sure the people in those nations did. The protests were huge and worldwide, even before the invasion started. This page makes inspiring reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

Weird, to me it was pretty obvious for weeks if not months what was going to happen. I actually was not surprised at all when it did. Very disappointed, but not surprised.

If you are in the U.S. it's probably easy sitting on top of the world economically wondering why people fight. That's what I find amusing about HN. Life is great making $300k/year at FAANG. Why do people fight?

Think again, this is happening right at the border for me.

In the end, we are just sentient apes on a space rock.

We won't pass the great filter.

The great filter? You mean when the sun expands and burns everyone?

I feel some of us have a small shot of escaping it with hibernation and a spacecraft that can last millions of years. Doesn't seem too far fetched for this tech to be realized.

There are lots of ways humanity could be wiped off this rock long before the sun burns the earth to a crisp in 600M years. I'd argue if we haven't transitioned to a fleet of o'neil cylinders by then, we've probably earned our extinction.

This is a direct consequence of having a free will: if only one world leader decides (in his free will) to terrorize others, others must defend themselves against him - and so they are spending money for military...

This is the fatal game theory problem with peaceful utopia. All it takes is one sociopath to realize they can increase their power by breaking the rules, and now we need to spend resources on a global police force.

> All it takes is one sociopath

No, it does not.

The are probably tenths of millions of sociopaths out there and 99.99% of them are not given the power to become dictators/CEOs.

In healthy societies they don't even get hired as cops.

Power is taken not given. This is why highly competent sociopaths are magnetically attracted to founding and leading large corporations and running for public office. Once in power they use their influence in ways that harms society but helps themselves. I don’t see how a society populated by humans could survive without institutions to protect humanity from the tyrants amongst our own.

> institutions to protect humanity

But why do those institutions have to be armed? In theory, if corporations were under sufficiently vigilant democratic control, and the electoral/political system meant that leaders and policies reflected the best interests of most people, then sociopaths would have their power taken from them the moment they tried to wield it in an inappropriate way.

An armed organization to "protect us from bad people" sounds like the mob.

What do you mean we aren’t making things, I’ve seen all sorts of fascinating Raytheon weapons!

what a sad state of affairs that people think the most plausible solution to unifying us all is a common enemy serving us with a strong insecurity of our future..

Sad but real. Necessity breeds unity, however as creatures of natural selection, we are evolved to all make ourselves more fit and more successful for selection. We compete, have wars and are in conflict because it is woven into our basic biology.

Unity exists in biology only as an anomaly, because the complexity of your biological existence from your brain to your arms, hand and feet exist because your ancestors triumphed over others.

I've been complaining about this for 30 years (and protesting sometimes too).

It feels hopeless, on some days I completely understand why some protestors immolate themselves... but younger generations have always made me feel a little better (I wish more of them would vote, but I understand why they don't).

There have been 14 cases of (political) self-immolation in the 2020s so far:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolat...

yes, notably just last week in front of the US Supreme Court for climate change inaction... some Buddhists consider it a compassionate act

So many of our innovations come out of the military though. Yes its sad we don't do that sort of research in different circumstances, but its an incredible motivating and driving force to get things done

The military mainly funds military innovations and that's the only area where they are the unique provider of solutions. Too bad things like radar absorbing coating or pre-fragmentation of shells are useless for civilians.

Famous innovations from ww2 like radio, radar, and computers all had civilian precursors that were then expediently targeted with funding to develop further. That is not really a testimony to the unusual innovation powers of the military, it's a statement about the political power of war as a means to concentrate resources.

>Maybe we need a proper alien invasion to bring us all together?

You mean Putin?

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